Wednesday, September 7, 2011 7:23:22 AMSo they just wanted to cut down the front lines a bit. I don't agree with how they went about it but I understand why they did it. It`s hard to fight one country if you have a hand full of others sneaking up behind you.

That is forecasting "what if" scenarios. We do not know what the future holds for the Iraqi's. Eventually we will have to leave. If the foundation of the local populace is not strong then yes a dictator can just come swooping in again etc...

The Iraqi`s have had 5000 years to get their act together. We can`t hold their hand forever, and we can`t worry about every two bit evil jack ass that pops up and threatens the USA.

We left South Vietnam. It failed but then became unified. Now the Vietnamese are trying to become our ally.Therefore so much for the evil communists.

George Washington our founding father who set much of the Executive Branch precedents that laid a core foundation for this country. He emphatically stated in his farewell address that we should avoid making permanent alliances. That includes Iraq. I agree with him.

Iraq need to be on it`s own now. Ditto with Afghanistan. Both countries have been around longer

Tuesday, September 6, 2011 12:38:53 AMThe title is misleading- "admit" is not the right word, as it implies that Clark claims he took an active role in the coup, which he did not. He is accusing others of a coup, and is clearly condemning their actions. While I think Clark's criticisms of the Bush administration are entirely valid, his accusations aren`t as damning as it would be for someone like Rumsfeld to come out and say "yeah, I admit that we capitalized on 9/11 by pushing a foreign policy agenda that we had outlined long before the attacks occurred- my bad!"

The problem with the "fly or fall" methodology is that we are leaving the future of Iraq to chance. So, let's say the government fails. There is a non-negligible probability that whoever takes on the leadership role will be hostile to the U.S., allowing al Qaeda (sp?) to base operations there, financing terrorist cells, etc. The more likely scenario is that a military leader in the region will stage a coup to take over the government, set himself up as leader for life, begin a massive "ethnic cleansing" which will inevitably include killing off the Kurdish population in the north, and destroy whatever hopes Iraq may have had for democracy. This person will also most likely allow al Qaeda cells in the country, because he blames the U.S. (rightly so) for the destruction of his country and the lives of so many of his family/friends/acquaintances, all the while paying lip service to the U.S. that these "terrorists must be stopped."